UAB, School of Dentistry ranked first nationally in NIDCR funding

The School of Dentistry leapt from No. 15 to No. 1 in rankings based on 2012 funding to dental schools and academic institutions in the country by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), one of the National Institutes of Health.

The School of Dentistry was awarded a total of $12,456,763 in 2012. In 2011, it received $4,251,671. This is an increase of slightly less than three times the school’s federal NIDCR research support from 2011 to 2012. It also is $2.5 million more in 2012 than the second-ranked Forsyth Institution.

UAB as a whole was awarded $12,935,420 from NIDCR is 2012. This total includes the School of Dentistry’s funding, as well as nearly $500,000 received by the UAB Departments of Genetics, Surgery, Microbiology, as well as Cell, Developmental and Integrative Biology, in the School of Medicine. In 2011, UAB also ranked 15 overall, with $6,385,752 in NIDCR funding.

The majority of the NIDCR funding increase, Michael Reddy, D.M.D., D.M.Sc., dean of the School of Dentistry said, is due to the new National Dental Practice-Based Research Network. The seven-year, $66.8-million grant announced in 2012 has created a national dental practice-based research network, consolidating the institute’s former three regional research networks into a single, nationally coordinated effort. It is housed in the UAB Department of Clinical and Community Sciences under the leadership of Gregg Gilbert, D.D.S, M.B.A. The school received $9,976,266 for the project in 2012.

UAB investigators are studying the long-term benefits and risks of four widely used diabetes drugs in combination with metformin, the most common first-line medication for treating type 2 diabetes. Recruitment of volunteers for the project, called the Glycemia Reduction Approaches in Diabetes: A Comparative Effectiveness (GRADE) Study, begins in June.